The moment Ilya left,I wanted nothing more than to chase after Demyan.
I didn’t, because honestly, I don’t know what I’d have done. Maimed him, probably. Besides, as I passed his study, I could hear Erin ripping into him and him shouting back. I knew where that was going to end. Them naked and doing the deed on the floor of the study or up in their room.
I needed to calm myself.
And lose myself in the tingling heat still inside me from Ilya’s kiss.
I hug Albert while we lie on the bed, checking him to make sure he’s okay from Demyan shaking him off.
His melting eyes look at me.
“I know,” I whisper. “You’re okay. He didn’t hurt you.”
Maybe I should tell Albert off for biting Demyan, but I can’t make myself. He’s not a big dog, and he didn’t do more than lightly puncture skin. I saw the wound when Demyan tried to apologize, to make it up to the dog.
Albert’s not violent at all. But he is protective, and I love that he tried to protect Ilya.
I drop kisses on his head. “Did you do it because you couldn’t stop that bad Radimir from taking me?”
Albert whines, a sorrowful sound.
He’s a good dog, the best, and I tell him so.
Then I add, “Besides, I’m safe now.”
Albert huffs out a breath.
“I’m glad you’re here with me, Albert.”
My guard’s somewhere in the house, probably downstairs since he didn’t follow me up. Demyan probably put him on Ilya watch.
Honestly, sometimes I could strangle him. He’s stubborn. An ass, he’s beyond reasonable. My throat closes and vision blurs as the anger ticks up again.
To try and calm myself, I touch a finger to my lips, tracing where our mouths met.
I hate this. Hate everything about it. I almost call Isla, but I don’t. She’ll have her hands full with Maize, and I don’t want to interrupt that. Besides, I have a niggling suspicion she’d pack her up, drive over here, and hand out some choice words in Demyan’s direction.
Not because she has a death wish, but because she’s never seen Demyan in full destruction mode. She’s never seen the violent, dark side of my brother.
Yes, there was my wedding, but it was so chaotic, so many screaming, running people that she didn’t see Demyan’s reaction.
But I know what he’s like.
He’d never do anything to her. But with the kind of mood he’s in, he may lose his temper, something he’s doing a lot lately. Or worse, show her just how darkly powerful and deadly he is through his treatment of me.
Demyan doesn’t have to kill or hurt or threaten to do that. I’ve seen him. It’s like a switch, and once it flips and the urbanityfalls away, the bratva pakhan will rise. My friends don’t need that.
Or maybe he won’t.
Maybe I’m just overexaggerating. But there’s a difference in knowing and understanding who someone is. Just like me having a bodyguard is different to understanding just what that bodyguard will do to a threat.
A reason why I wanted out of this world.
“And yet you ended up back in it,” I tell myself.
But Ilya is Ilya. I know he can be just as dangerous as my brother, but he’s also exactly what it says on the tin.
He doesn’t keep me under lock and key. If I told Gus, my driver, that I wanted to drive around, Ilya might have me watched from a distance, but he trusts me more than Demyan does.
